Month: February 2021

–Got fruit/veggies at the light rail farmers market.

–Re-unboxed the Leica M 262. Put a voltmeter on the charger (and another charger); it certainly appears that the charger is putting out 0 volts, as the other one appeared to be putting out 8 or so. Rigged up one of my battery chargers to the Leica battery with some wires; doesn’t seem to be doing anything. If the (coming) Nitecore charger works on this battery, I may well keep the camera. Though it does look like a gray market unit (no warranty), given that the serial number appears to have been obscured with a sharpie under the plastic cover on the base. Very weird.

–Played around some more with the pool sweep. Given that it still turns circles after re-aiming the rear jet 5 times, I’m thinking the only cure will be slowing it down with a restrictor or bypass valve adjustment.

–Dropped tax docs off at Finton & Finton.

–A second set of hearing aid wax guards came in from same eBay seller as the first set. First ones were too large and didn’t fit. These were in a different color dispenser (same brand, though) and did fit. No idea why they sent two sets.

–Camellias (red, white and pink) are looking fabulous.

–Casio EX-ZS35 came in. 20 megapixels, 6x zoom, and just a stunning tiny luxurious-feeling case. Hard to believe what they put in a package that small. Going to be very hard to choose between that and the Leica C, which does raw and is also small and great in-hand.

–Played with the pool sweep some more. Turns out it’s running at 41 RPM (should be 28-30). Dropping both pumps way low had no effect. I need to work on it via restrictor and bypass valve–when the water warms up.

–Horribly enough, the Summicron 50 Dual Range that wouldn’t work on the M9 works great on the Sony A7R (with adapter, of course). Problem is, the Sony/Zeiss 55mm lens, with autofocus, blows the Summicron out of the water, at least at f2. I’ll be tossing the Summicron and Fujinons, and (maybe) calling it quits on old lenses. Exceptions would be Helios, Jupiter, etc. I can’t imagine how an old lens would stand up to the Sony/Zeiss, except for bokeh. That’s what I’ve been reading on the web for years, and chose to ignore in my quest for vintage coolness.

–Took a shower. The 1905 Gillette double ring is a nice shaver; the 1905 Gillette blade I tried was like shaving with a carpet knife.

–Pool sweep works. Runs too fast, but I believe that’s correctable.

–Leica M9 (Typ 242) came in. Battery and/or charger don’t work. Seems to be a fairly common problem. Contacted Amazon, who said item is not returnable but they will contact seller on my behalf and seller will get back to me within 48 hours. Meanwhile, I ordered a nice Nitecore charger. Turns out the Summicron 50 lens I bought ($1,500) is a “dual range” model, one of 3-4 nominal M lenses that don’t work on this camera. Hoping I didn’t hurt anything when I applied a little force to get the lens to focus at infinity, which it won’t. So that’s two dead Leicas in two weeks. Crap.

–Made pizza for dinner. For some reason (frozen dough?) it didn’t rise much and came out hyper-crispy. This could be hard to adjust, since the same dough (used fresh, not frozen) worked great a few days ago. I guess I cold cut the recipe in half…

–Took the Polaris apart again and eventually found a clog in the last possible place: a small right-angle tube that sends a jet of water to turn the paddlewheel. (1) The clog shouldn’t have gotten that far, what with all the filters. (2) It was several small bits of redwood debris. Still, I would have thought that the final huge filter would trap anything bigger than a few microns. (3) The tube should have had a smooth curve, not an abrupt right angle. Anyway, after a futile attempt to get it running right, I put the bottom back on, which holds the idler wheel (d’oh!) and found a website that went step-by-step in showing how to properly install and adjust the wheels. It will run right tomorrow, guaranteed.

–Checked the C-Lux on center-weighted, multi-area and spot metering. Multi wins out, at least for side-yard pictures in the sun.

–Gillette double ring from 1905 came in. Pretty cool.

–Watched an episode of Dr. Blake with subtitles. Much better.

–Organized batteries in the utility room.

–Pool sweep tail went crazy, stopped after I cleared a small obstruction from the back jet. Problem: even though back jet was spouting 20 feet, the wheels weren’t turning. We’ll see tomorrow.

–Leica Summicron lens came in. Looks super. Just need a camera now…

–Made my third pan pizza. This one finally got it all right. Cooked for 30 minutes at 450; crust was wonderful.

–Roasted caf beans. Figured out (maybe) how to eliminate chaff and smoke/scorching problems: use only 200g of beans, set max temp to 440 or so.

–UPS (Leica C-Lux) delayed again, until Monday.

–Took a shower. As feared, the Blackland Blackbird Jet is too aggressive for me. Now I have 17 Blackland Blackbirds to sell…

–Set up a charging station in the utility room.

–Waited in vain for UPS to deliver Leica C-Lux.

–Did some research on Pacific Grove water permits. Thick stuff.

–Turns out the multitude of hearing aid batteries I have, 312’s, are wrong. The hearing aids take #13 batteries. I tossed a bunch a while ago, but have a vague recollection that my confusion then was 310 vs. 312. I don’t know. Will order #13’s on eBay.

–Zenitar lens came in. A quick test suggested it’s better than the Fujinons, but focus ring is jerky. I’ll CLA it.

–Went to Roseville for vaccinations. Smooth. Stopped at Target on the way back, which didn’t have my eye drops or deodorant or yeast. Things is fallin’ apart…

–Eterna Kontiki watch case came in. Now I just need a nice dial/movement.

–Made 3 baguettes with King Arthur flour recipe. Takes all day, essentially, with 45 minutes between each of several rises.

–Identified a periwinkle plant by the back pool fence.

–Subscribed to Atlantic Monthly. Seems kind of like the New Yorker of 10 years ago, before it welcomed hyper-liberalism and coarse language.

–Cleaned the bird fountain; put the two hoses back in place.

–Got oranges, apples, radishes at the Folsom light rail farmers market.

–Dental pick, Froggy the Gremlin and long rubber gloves came in.

–Made pan pizza.

–Leica C-Lux fell prey to a “Mode dial is not in the proper position” fault last night. Very frustrating: sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Looking on google today showed this is a fairly common issue with point-and-shoot mode dials–Nikon, Lumix, etc.–probably all from the same factory in China. I played with it today. Took the back off and unclipped/reclipped a connector; blew a lot of compressed air on it; etc. It works now, but I may buy another just to avoid the anxiety over the next failure. [edit: Failed again just now (3 PM). Bought another from Amazon.]

–Started dough for a pan pizza tomorrow.

–Did big shopping for Grace’s list at Bel Air.

–Leica C-Lux came in. It also feels good to hold. There was some scary stuff at first (uncentered focus point, cluttered screen), but after a second round of setup all looked good. And the photos are astounding. Using mega-zoom and auto focus on the hummingbird feeder, I can read all the text on it. Further, the jpg’s seem to allow as much manipulation as the rwl’s; don’t know that I even need to shoot raw on this camera. FINALLY!!

–Grace is in a snit again.

–Took a shower. New Pearl razor is okay, but really heavy. Vintage Gibbs razor is small but superb. A winner!

–Replaced hearing aid batteries at 9 AM.

–Got error messages trying to install Lightroom on Grace’s Mac. Turns out she wants to repair photos anyway, not just optimize exposure and such. So she’s going with GIMP, already on her computer. After a fair amount of hassle and a chat session at Adobe, my Lightroom activation count was reset to zero. I uninstalled it then reinstalled it, and it sings now. A win.

–Finally sorted out the Leica C-Lux rwl photo editor mess. Can use MetaImage to change make/model to PANASONIC/DC-ZS200, which will allow Affinity to edit files–though not Lightroom. Considering upgrading the Mac OS to the latest, thus losing Lightroom. Will probably depend on how slick I can make the Affinity interface.

–Left hearing aid out at 5 PM.

–Got apples (Hooverville), radishes, oranges (Kelso), andouille sausage at the light rail farmers market.

–Made BLTs for dinner with no-knead bread. Pretty good.

–A pretty nothing day.

–Reinstalled some photo editors; reaffirmed that nothing can touch Lightroom. Raw Power is close, mostly because of a beautifully simple interface.

–Pearl razor came in, along with a brush, shaving cream, and a zillion blades. Looks nice.

–White Casio Exilim came in. Nice shape. Compared it to black one, was going to switch cases, but then noticed black one has damage on top metallic parts (independent of case). Kept it as it came.

–Heard on the news that Sutter is vaccinating 65+. Signed up online. Grace got an email from Sutter this morning. I didn’t.

–Started some no-knead bread.

–Took a shower. Final test with the Wolfman razor. Worked okay, some self-healing bleeding. Will keep for now. At the rate I shave, I’ll only be using it twice a year.

–Fiddled with the pool sweeper a little more. Re-aimed the nozzle and set both main and aux2 pumps to 2,500 RPM.

–Roasted some caf beans. Came out nice.

–Went to Noah’s for bagels; it was closed.

–Chopped up the remaining wind storm tree debris.

–Made blackberry-lemon pancakes for breakfast (Grace’s Christmas present). Yuck.

–Cleaned up some tree debris outside. Worked a little on the pool sweeper, which was really slow today. Didn’t see anything that might cause slowness.